Weather over weekend took its toll

Though the weather was only a bit cool for us, wearing a jacket a few days, it was not good news for bluebirds. Friday and Saturday were cool and the next days the night time low was still 40s to low 50s. Bluebirds need to be fed every day, whereas swallow nestlings can stand some cold days by going into torpor.

South Side

Let's just start from the end where there were some good news. Box 13 has swallow eggs in it and box 14 has nestlings. Box 14 had five eggs and looked like a swallow nest in the beginning. But box 13 also has swallow eggs and the typical feathered nest. The boxes are some 20 feet apart. It is not common for two pairs of swallows to nest so close.

Inside are the eggs (far box) and the nestlings in the closer box:

Then we come to box 9. These were the earliest bluebird nestlings to hatch. They died over the weekend. The nestlings looked almost fully feathered. Two bad days was enough to seal their fate.

In Box 7, bluebird nestlings were alive, but I am not quite comfortable with them, they seemed less responsive. 

In Box 2 on the South side, first box you would come to as you cross the old bridge, all nestlings had died.

North Side

There we have just one box of bluebirds, 13, and they were in good spirits. Perhaps being up on the ridge and in the open, the temperatures were just a bit higher. I think we had 4 and now there are just 2 or maybe three.

Video of them screeching.

Other than that, the North side has a number of empty swallow nests and a few with a lot of eggs:

It seems the swallows are slightly delayed in laying eggs.